


Amnesia

by rinskiroo



Series: SWWA February Ficlet Challenge 2019 [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Memory Loss, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 01:36:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17951144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: Rey must have hit her head on something at some point in the past few hours.  She can’t quite remember what happened, but her head is pounding and there’s still a trickle of blood when she pulls her hand away.  This planet is green, lush, and swampy.  Her boots clomp through the mud and little water-hopping insects skip around her legs when she’s stalled out for too long.  Green’s new, she thinks, and she wonders why she’s out here.





	Amnesia

Rey must have hit her head on something at some point in the past few hours.  She can’t quite remember what happened, but her head is pounding and there’s still a trickle of blood when she pulls her hand away.

This planet is green, lush, and swampy.  Her boots clomp through the mud and little water-hopping insects skip around her legs when she’s stalled out for too long.  Green’s new, she thinks, and she wonders why she’s out here-- _ how  _ she got out here.  She pauses to drum her fingers on her thigh.

“Looking for something…” she whispers to herself, like a reminder.  Yes, that’s it. She’s looking for something. “But what…?”

She doubles over suddenly as a wave of nausea crashes against her.  She presses her hand to her mouth and thankfully is able to hold it down.  However, the bile she tastes on her teeth as she runs her tongue across them tells her she wasn’t able to hold it back earlier.  She spits into the swamp and rubs her sleeve across her mouth. After a moment, she slowly pushes herself upright and looks back the way she came from.  There’s a long trench indicating the path she’s been walking, though she’s not sure where she came from or how long she’s been going. Maybe she can backtrack her steps.  But she’s got to be going somewhere, right?

“I must have had a good reason for coming this way.”  She turns back to face in front of her. “I hope.”

Not knowing where she intends to go, Rey keeps moving forward.  She’s not sure how much time passes, but the sun sinks off to her left and there’s a pair of moons that make an appearance.  Unsure of what other options she has, she walks. Until there’s a buzzing on her waist.

“Huh.”  She pulls the boxy device off the clip on her belt and wonders why she didn’t think to check what sorts of supplies she was carrying earlier.  She also wonders if there’s maybe some food hidden away in the pouch hanging off her hip.

“Oh!”  She smiles wide as her fingers find half of a ration bar.  She can’t remember eating the other half, but it must have been a while ago because now she’s quite hungry.  She eats it and pokes at the device--some sort of tracker or sensor. This is probably very useful.

It beeps.  When she takes a step forward, it beeps again, more insistently.  She follows the beeping guide until it takes her to a squelching crater in the mud.  The mud is churning, but it a way that seems unnatural. Rey pauses to watch it, tucking away the sensor device.  The mud churns in one direction, then slows, and goes back the other way.

She doesn’t have a spade in her belt, so she finds a stick and pokes it into the mud.  Rey’s surprised when she hits something solid. Apparently, whatever she hit is surprised too and the mud churns even more than before.

With hands and stick, Rey digs down into the mud until a pair of pointy, metal antennae stick up out of the muck, followed by a chunk of curved metal that looks like it used to be orange and white.

It whistles, or tries to.  Its speaker is still somewhere under the mud.

“You got something I can hold onto?” she asks, though wonders if it can even understand her.

A claw-like apparatus shoots up out of the mud, splashing her.  Rey tries to wipe the dirt off her face, but can’t seem to find a clean spot left on her sleeves.  She is suddenly no longer fond of this green, wet place. The apparatus waves a few times until Rey grabs onto it and tries to pull it out of the mud.  It’s not really that great for gripping, and, stars, is this thing heavy. But she pulls and pulls until its domed head pops up out of the sludge.

It whistles excitedly at her, with much clearer beeps and whirs.

“Yes, yes,” Rey agrees, though it’s talking really fast and she’s not exactly sure of half of what it’s trying to say.  “I’m doing my best.”

There’s a pause, like it’s stopping to think, and then it says something rather odd.

“The Force?” Rey asks and blinks.  “I just need a better grip.”

It beeps more and more, about all manner of things, and throws out names.  She thinks they’re names anway. Someone named Poe is going to be very upset she crashed his X-Wing.  Finn and Chewie (is that a name?) are probably worried sick. Rey nods at the droid and keeps pulling.  Even if it’s off its rocker, maybe it’s got some sort of nav system that can lead her to help, or at least more food.

She groans and pulls and with one last sucking squelch of mud, the round chassis of the BB-unit pops free of the muck.  Rey manages to roll out of the way before it lands on top of her. Broken ribs is exactly what she doesn’t need on top of whatever is going on with her head.  She then has to curl up into a ball because the droid starts spinning in a circle and shaking itself off like a damn animal, sending mud flying everywhere.

“Please tell me you know where a shower is.”

It’s beeping quickly at her again, asking a thousand questions she doesn’t understand or has no idea what the answer is.

“Friend,” she starts, but then stops as its dome tilts back and gives her an incredulous beep.  Yes, it probably has a specific designation, but one she can’t quite seem to recall at the moment.  “Beebs.”

There’s another confused whistle and Rey sighs.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says.  “I think I hit my head. I can’t… I can’t remember things very well.  I don’t know where we are, or where I’m supposed to be going to.

“I’m Rey,” she offers with a smile as big as she can muster.

There are a couple of sad sounding beeps and Rey feels awful about being the cause of those distressed little noises.  Maybe they were friends.

“Beebee-ate,” Rey says, testing it on her lips after the droid gives his name.  “Does sound familiar, actually. You ever been to Jakku?”

There’s an excited whistle--they met on Jakku.

“Oh.”  It’s an odd sensation to have no memory of an event and then to have someone insist that it happened.

BB-8 prods her to keep moving forward, and she follows, because it’s not like she has any other idea where to go.  And she’s got a good feeling about this little guy. She can’t really explain it, but she knows he’s not going to lead her into harm.

“Why don’t you tell me all about it.”

He doesn’t need any more prompting than that and launches into all of their exploits.  Rey can hardly believe it and thinks he probably blew a circuit somewhere. It all sounds rather unlike her life.  But here she is, on some wet, green planet with not a speck of sand in sight. It’s a couple hours trek, at least. The moons climb higher into the sky and sun sinks lower.  The other stars are starting to make an appearance and she asks a few times how much further.

Rey’s not sure which she hears first--the excited whistling of BB-8 as they crest over the hill or the shouts from the camp they’ve happened upon.

“It’s them!” someone shouts.

Rey blinks at the sudden brightness.  They’d been walking in twilight and now there’s flood lights illuminating several large tents, a couple fighters, and an old, beat up freighter.  A pain shoots through her skull and she winces away from the light. There’s no more fresh blood on her fingers as she presses them to her scalp, but she can feel the large scab that’s formed there throughout the day.

“What happened to me?” she mumbles to herself as she slowly follows the rolling droid down the hill.

“Rey!  Rey!”

A man rushes up to her, but she still can’t see him very well because it’s still too bright.  But there’s something about him. It’s warm and familiar, and though her eyes sting, she’s not seeing him that way.  There’s this glow that surrounds him that she knows intimately and it stops barely a foot in front of her.

BB-8 is beeping at him, and he asks the droid to slow down.  She smiles--he doesn’t speak the droid’s language, but he’s trying.  She’s proud of him. And then he’s sad, suddenly. She feels his pain.

No, don’t be sad, Finn…

“Finn?”

“Rey?  Are you--?”

His question is cut off by Rey thrusting herself forward and wrapping her arms around him.  Tears sting her eyes, and not just because of the lights, but because in an instant, a flood of memory swallows her.  Her head is searing, but she’ll take a thousand migraines like this to keep the memory of Finn.

“I crashed Poe’s X-Wing.  Cracked my helmet in half,” she says in a rush.  “My head is killing me. Can you ask them to turn down the lights?”

“Yeah, yeah.”  He lets out a relieved breath and presses his lips into her hair where she can feel his smile.  “Let’s find the doc. Get you a nice, quiet, dark tent.”

“Stay with me?” she asks.  “Beebee-ate, too.”

“Of course.”

One hand clasps onto Finn’s as he leads her through the camp, the other grazes across BB-8’s dome as he rolls next to her.  “Thanks, my dear friend.”


End file.
